


Mono no Aware

by Biffhofosho



Series: Neo Seoul Series [1]
Category: Monsta X (Band)
Genre: Cyberpunk, F/M, Face-Riding, Future Fic, Neo Seoul Series, One Shot, Oral Sex, POV Third Person, Porn With Plot, Porn with Feelings, Prostitution, Series, Smut, Unprotected Sex, Vaginal Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-24
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-14 19:28:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29672148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Biffhofosho/pseuds/Biffhofosho
Summary: Hyungwon’s world is loud, crowded, and artificial, a place where people are connected by wires and sex is a transaction. Through the flickering neon and acid rain, all he wants is one real thing, and he’s willing to pay any price for it.
Relationships: Chae Hyungwon/Original Female Character(s)
Series: Neo Seoul Series [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2195832
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	Mono no Aware

**Author's Note:**

> Cyberpunk future fic. The idea started off as a oneshot that popped into my head listening to the kickass song “Drone Racing League” by Gunship, but somewhere along the line, this mutated into a different oneshot. However, my brain was still attached to the idea of the first fic inspired by the song, so then the muse, in her infinite wisdom, said, “Have your cake and eat it, too, Mama.” 
> 
> So here I am now, with a burgeoning series of interconnected oneshots featuring the same futuristic setting but different members and OCs. This is the first that tees up all the others. IDK why my muse does these things, but I have to go along with her upon pain of insanity. Stay tuned for more from Neo Seoul.

He had never been in a place like this, and he’d certainly never seen a woman like her.

She held open the crimson door with one arm while she studied him, a hint of a smile playing at the corner of her lips. A waterfall of raven hair sluiced over her neck and the pale shoulder her oversized sweater teased. He’d expected a body-hugging mini-dress or even lingerie, not a cozy pink top and black leggings. Even more surprisingly, she wore next to no makeup, not even the requisite lipstick or cat-eye liner. She looked like she’d been waiting for him to come home.

For a moment, Hyungwon forgot to breathe.

“Please come in,” she said.

Her voice was like smoke and mirrors, dark and enticing and easy to get lost in. He followed it eagerly.

He stepped over the threshold, but she didn’t move. Now, he was in her orbit, and, at the first beckoning of her subtle chocolate perfume, he was trapped—probably forever.

Her eyes, both almond-shaped and -colored, appraised his face, flicking from his own long black hair to his espresso eyes and finally to his full, pink lips.

“Hyungwon?”

With the last of his cognizance, he nodded.

“I’m Denarii.”

This snapped him out of his hypnosis, and he blinked at the vision before him. “I— I thought I was with Winter?”

Denarii smiled reassuringly at him. “You are, but that’s the name they assigned me. You don’t want that. I can tell you want something real, so I’m giving you my real name.”

“Is that allowed?” Hyungwon asked, more than a little worried. This world had consequences, most of them terrible, and he already felt the compulsion to protect this woman from all of them.

Her smile drooped a little before she managed to pick it back up. “Everything that happens in my room is at my discretion, so long as I pay my bills. Speaking of, let’s get the tacky part over with so we can just enjoy each other’s company, okay? Credits or trade?”

“Uh, credits, I guess,” he fumbled as he withdrew a shaky hand from his pocket and hovered his wrist above the hand-held reader.

With a whir and a ding, Hyungwon was on the clock just like a cab fare, only Denarii’s apartment was a far cry from the urine-soaked taxis he was used to in The Troughs.

It was the first time he’d ever been in an apartment this massive. So far as he could tell, it was one huge space save for a bathroom and closet in the back corner. He’d even bet credits that the bathroom had a full tub in it. A kitchen stretched along the back wall with a two-person dinette beside it while a couch and armchair faced a huge screen on another wall. There were no windows, however, just a long steel wall to bring some cold reality to the soft pinks and punchy reds that colored nearly everything else. There were no paintings or knickknacks or sentimentalities of any kind, just a dresser adorned with a glittering collection of perfumes and powders. Everything looked company-issued.

Like an anchor, an enormous bed waited closest to the door. His eyes fixed on the shimmer of its pristine sheets and its gigantic pillows. He’d only seen beds like it in the movies, and he fought the urge to fall into it face-first. Still, there was a reason it was the focal point of the room, and the creep of shame darkened the corners of his mind.

Hyungwon quickly bowed his head to hide his embarrassment.

With a smirk, Denarii let go of the door and padded back into her place. “Shoes off, please. Make yourself comfortable.”

Still bewildered, he hung up his hoodie on a nearby hook before he slid off his boots. He was about to step into the proffered slippers, but at the first kiss of plush carpet beneath his feet, he changed his mind. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt anything other than cold concrete beneath him.

Hyungwon glanced over at his hostess. She was in the kitchen, pouring pale golden liquid into two glass flutes. Unsure of what to do next, he took a seat on the couch and waited, his hands knotted in his lap.

Denarii joined him a moment later, tucking her legs underneath herself as she studied her guest. “Champagne?”

His eyes bugged as he took the glass and sniffed its toasty effervescence. “Is it real?”

“Real as it gets these days. Lab-grown grapes, but they are from New France.”

Hyungwon should have savored something so precious, but he downed it in one gulp.

Denarii chuckled. “This is your first time at a brothel, isn’t it?”

“Is it that obvious?”

“It’d help if you stopped brushing your hair behind your ear. That’s your worst tell,” she said as she tucked a loose strand back for him. As her nail grazed the neglected flesh there, a million pinpricks alighted across his skin the way the champagne bubbles had along his tongue. He wished he could have savored this feeling, too.

Denarii motioned toward the back of the room and asked, “You hungry? Kitchen’s mostly for show, as is my cooking, but I might have a few things, or I can call for catering?”

The thought was tempting. Hyungwon hadn’t had a real meal in weeks, but another person intruding on his time with her, even for a moment, felt untenable. He shook his head.

Silence engulfed them, but it was even more disorienting than the champagne. Hyungwon was used to constant sensory bombardment—holograms, neon, advertisements, drunkards, dope heads, garbage, traffic, sirens, rats in the ceiling.

Here, it was toes brushing carpet, bubbles bursting against glass, and vanilla and chocolate on skin. The simplicity was terrifying.

Hyungwon’s hand reached for his hair again before he caught himself and sat on it instead. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Denarii’s grin.

“It’s a lot to take in, isn’t it?” she said before she sipped her champagne.

He nodded.

“You know, you can ask me anything you want. I promise I won’t be offended. Or, if you’d rather, I can listen. Or we can just finish the bottle,” she said with an eyebrow waggle that almost made him laugh. That sensation was as foreign as the silence.

Hyungwon summoned his courage to face her at last. “Are you… one of those?”

Despite his risky insinuation, Denarii smiled and shook her head lightly. “I’m human. Just a little enhanced.”

She double-tapped her temple beside her right eye, and her iris swirled neon purple in response.

“It lets me read heart rate and temperature, stuff like that, so I can give clients exactly what they want and nothing they don’t, but I don’t need it with you.”

Another double-tap, and soft brown swirled back where it belonged.

“No?” stuttered Hyungwon while trying to maintain his no-longer-private heartrate.

“You don’t want or need science,” she said as she skirted her fingertips along his forearm, and there was no longer the smallest hope of keeping his hammering heart to himself. But Denarii seemed to relish it as the silky pads of her fingers ghosted along his pulse point.

“You read my bio?”

She shook her head. “Didn’t need to. I read your eyes. You want a genuine connection, Hyungwon, though this is a funny place to look for one of those.”

“I’ve tried everywhere else,” he admitted, his eyes never leaving her hand. “Clubs, bars, casinos, dating services, even churches. None of it’s real. I’m beginning to wonder if I’m even real.”

Suddenly, Denarii was straddling his lap, her ass pressing against his thighs, his face in between her hands, her mouth hovering above him. Without a word, she pulled his cheek against her chest and held him close, one hand around his shoulders and the other twined into his hair. He could hear her heart beat. There were no clicks or whirs, no grinding gears or ticking components, just soft, chocolate-scented warmth. No wonder she commanded such a high price tag.

“Does this feel real?” she asked.

His hands tentatively hugged her waist as he burrowed into her sweater.

When was the last time he’d held somebody or been held? Probably his parents’ funeral, or were those just handshakes?

Denarii raked her fingers through his hair, and his scalp bristled eagerly at her unexpected caress. Hyungwon glanced up to find her looking at him, a sincerity softening the corners of her eyes with no glowing purple to betray the moment. Somehow, she just knew what he craved.

A minute ticked by, then two, then who knew how many. His mind flickered once to how his account was depleting by the second, but he didn’t care. She could take it all so long as she held him like this.

But to his great regret, Denarii climbed off him. Every inch of his skin iced over, and he fought the urge to whimper, but a moment later, she offered her hand.

Together, they padded toward the metal wall where she planted him facing the steel before she slid behind him, her arms worming through his at his sides so she could hug him loosely around the waist.

“Watch this,” she whispered in his ear.

Every little hair vibrated at her words.

A moment later, the bedroom lights dimmed as the steel glided upward to reveal the city beneath their feet.

Hyungwon had never been this high up. Only people of power and means were privileged to the sky while the rest of them trundled through eternal night in the alleys below, hoping, like him, to save enough some day for a taste of such luxury. They were so high up, roofs and balconies swallowed up the clotted veins of the streets, including his dismal studio apartment.

The horizon glowed with the omnipresent neon while flickering holograms of beer and women and takeout jolted his attention to every corner of the jagged skyline. Beyond the skyscrapers and the antennas and the sensory overload, there were darker silhouettes, silent behemoths that slumbered through the chaos.

Hyungwon couldn’t see a person anywhere save for his wide-eyed reflection in the glass.

“Do you like the view, my love?” asked Denarii, placing a kiss just behind his ear.

He marveled, as much at the term of endearment as the breadth of the city. His hands tightened around hers. “I’ve never seen Seoul like this before. It goes on forever. I can even see the mountains!”

Her nose nuzzled the nape of his neck. “Then I’m glad I got to share it with you.”

It was effortless, the way she made him forget this was a pay-by-the-minute scenario. With her arms around him and her chin on his shoulder, this could have been their everyday after-work routine. How many others had fallen into this beautiful illusion of hers? She wouldn’t have a penthouse room if she hadn’t earned it. Did it even matter? She was his until his credits ran out.

Hyungwon swiveled in her arms to face her this time, and she greeted him with a smile.

“Hi,” she said coyly.

“Hi.”

He couldn’t help his smile back. He thought he had forgotten how, but Denarii had coaxed that out of him as well. He wrapped his arms around her, too, and leaned in for a kiss, but she surprised him by dodging his lips and pecking the corner of his mouth instead. Before he even had the time to be hurt, however, she kissed the other side of his mouth to even it out, then the tip of his nose, followed by both of his eyelids, and each of his fingertips, even the grim little scab from tonight’s blood test that ensured he was clean.

He waited for her in darkness now, wondering where her lips would land next. His cheeks? His forehead? His jaw?

But she kissed his lips chastely now so he could feel exactly how full and silky they were. She dragged her mouth across his, not yet opening up for him despite the fact that his every atom was burning to taste her. She was taking her time with him. Maybe she just wanted his credits, but Hyungwon let himself believe it was something more.

Denarii pulled back and pressed her thumb to his flushed bottom lip. “You have the most beautiful mouth I’ve ever seen.”

It was a compliment, but instead, it felt like a blade to his chest when he realized how many others she must have kissed.

“Hyungwon?”

His eyes fluttered open. She was staring at him, lips parted, brows soft—utterly feminine. Her hand moved from his mouth to his cheek and then back to his ear, where she rubbed his lobe idly.

He knew in that moment he was in love with her. It didn’t matter that it had only been a half hour. He was in love with her.

“Kiss me,” Denarii begged.

This time he wouldn’t let her hold back. His mouth came for hers, hot and hungry, eager to dive inside and commit her to memory. Her tongue met his in urgency, and he discovered the champagne was sweeter in her mouth. She let out a little sigh, and he devoured it as he spun them around.

Hyungwon drove them back, but Denarii managed between kisses, “Not the glass!”

Just in time, he course-corrected, and she collided with the steel divider between panes. She let out a laugh and wrapped her arms around his neck as she rubbed his nose with hers. “There he is, my Hyungwon.”

His fingers curled into her sweater as he crushed her closer to him. There was nothing he wouldn’t do for this woman. She was inside his head, under his skin, and deep within his heart.

His kisses were more demanding now, asking for something even he wasn’t sure of, but Denarii answered with a fervent tongue and roaming hands. One of her legs stroked the outside of his, and he took the invitation to press deeper into her. She met his grind with her own, and the friction coaxed a groan from him. Heat surged through her thin leggings and penetrated his jeans as the chocolate and vanilla gave way to the headier perfume of her lust.

At last, Hyungwon’s fingers wandered under the hem of her sweater and found silken skin and yielding muscle. Denarii purred as he ventured further. He feathered over her ribcage and along her back until finally he circled around to her breasts. She hadn’t bothered with the pretense of a bra, and Hyungwon had to stop himself from frenzied teenage groping. Her nipples were already pert and expectant, but as his palms scudded over them, she jerked in his grasp.

Denarii broke from his mouth to stare breathlessly at him with eyes now as black as his own. She started to say something, but whatever it was meant to be was drowned out by a moan as he tugged on one of her nipples. Again and again, he played with her, imprinting her scintillating sounds on his memory forever.

Hyungwon needed more of her now, and he shucked her sweater over her head. Her skin glistened with a fresh sheen of sweat and the persistent glow of neon from below. His eyes drifted to her exposed breasts. They were peaked with dark nipples and just the right size to fill his hands, and he couldn’t wait another second to taste them.

He dipped his head down to circle his tongue around one stiff bud, and Denarii arched off the support. Instinctively, her nails dug into his scalp, and the pain brought with it a chaser of pleasure. He circled her again, and another soft sigh escaped her. This time, he drew her nipple between his lips and was rewarded with a gasp and something even more precious, a gentle whisper of his name.

Hyungwon’s hunger grew exponentially, and after he’d thoroughly adored one breast, he switched to her neglected one for the same treatment, but it wasn’t enough to curb the tide of his lust for her. He craved more of her body, more of her sweet music. He wanted to make sure she would never forget him, no matter how many other men trickled in and out of here. He wanted it to be as real for her as it was for him.

His mouth fell away from her, and Denarii let out another sigh, this one of frustration. She reached for him, and, for a long moment, she studied her fingers as they traced his features—up over his brow, along his cheek, around his ear, and finally, rubbing over his bottom lip. She didn’t say anything, but she didn’t need to. Finally, her hand moved to his shirt, and she whisked it over his head.

It was cool by the glass. His skin prickled, and a flash of nerves ripped through him.

Hyungwon knew he wasn’t built or even tone, and the last thing he wanted to do was disappoint his goddess, but Denarii’s fingers were already dancing across his wiry frame with dark intention. She mapped his sleek collar bone, the flat plane of his stomach, and finally, the sensitive skin just inside the waist of his jeans. Everywhere she touched burned, like she was branding him as her property, and he had no doubt he was.

She took a step forward, then one more, until their skin melded with one another. Her breasts flattened against his chest and her arms wrapped around him, and this time when she held him, their connection was anything but chaste.

She kneaded the length of his back as she licked a stripe along his collar, and Hyungwon tipped his head back with a long moan. Smirking against his skin, Denarii tugged his head back farther so she could lavish the white column of his throat with her tongue. When she’d had her fill of the delicate skin there, she placed a kiss over his heart, and the next thing he knew, she was dragging her nails down his back, creating little red hills as she dropped to her knees.

“Do you want this, Hyungwon?” she said in a smoky voice that drove him into a frenzy.

“Yes,” he breathed.

“Do you want me?”

“More than anything.”

Her attention solely on the task in front of her, Denarii undid the button at his waist and slipped her hand inside to grip his hard-on.

“I’ll give you all of me, baby, but I’m going to take all of you in return, okay?”

“Anything,” he repeated dreamily as his head drooped back again.

It had been months since he’d been touched like this, but it may as well have never happened. No one could compete with this enchantress. No would ever would.

Denarii pulled Hyungwon’s length free so she could praise him with her fingers. They coasted up and down his throbbing ridges and over the rosy head of his cock. He drew in a sharp breath at the electricity coursing through him, and she smiled before welcoming him into her mouth.

She was warm and inviting, and her tongue cradled him perfectly as she licked his whole length. Once his shaft was sufficiently wet, she worshipped the tip of him next, purring as her tongue swirled around him. She knew just how hard to suck and just how much of him to take.

Hyungwon’s hands knotted in her hair as an anchor—otherwise, he might believe this was all some pathetic fantasy of his. But she was real, and her nails dug into his thighs to remind him of that. With the extra support, she massaged his cock with her pink muscle before she curled it around him and sucked harder. Fireworks went off behind his eyes. The pressure, her heat, his desperation, it was all as inescapable as her scent.

Denarii was relentless, gliding him in and out of her mouth with slurps and hums too filthy for her virtuous face. She was flawless at his feet, her black hair bundled over her shoulder as she stared up at him with determined eyes and candied cheeks. His angel of vice could have finished him off with just that look, and he had to jam his eyes shut to concentrate on prolonging the inevitable.

Hyungwon got lost in her mouth. She kept tempting him deeper and deeper, and before he knew it, his hips were rutting into her. Without hesitation, Denarii took him, and he groaned as her throat constricted around his repeated intrusion. Her hand worked the base of his dick and met her lips with every pump as Hyungwon climbed higher and higher toward an explosion. He wanted to stop her before it was too late, but words were like taffy in his mouth, and it all felt too good, too good.

He was going to cum. No stopping it now.

She pulled back and rested her tongue under his flushed head while her fist continued stroking him, and he came harder than he could ever remember. It felt like he was emptying himself into her. His body jerked with each spurt of cum until he was shaking with the over-stimulation. Denarii stilled her hand, and finally, Hyungwon could open his eyes.

She waited on her knees, tongue painted white with his release, and when she finally caught his gaze, she swallowed. He moaned at her wantonness and toppled forward against the support to keep his knees from buckling.

“I should have stopped,” she confessed as she wiped the corners of her puffy lips, “but I told you I am going to take all of you.”

“Fuck,” was all a breathless Hyungwon could manage.

Denarii offered her hand to him, and he mustered his strength to take it. She led them over to her bed where she finished undressing him and helped him under her sheets. They were as soft as her skin and smelled just as good, and Hyungwon had no idea how he’d ever be able to leave them or the woman now tangled up in them beside him.

In his daze, she had slipped out of the rest of her clothes as well and pressed her nakedness along his side. Her breasts warmed his arm, and her damp core commanded the rest of his attention at his hip. She guided his face toward her, and she smiled gently in the perpetual amethyst twilight.

“How are you, my love?” she asked.

“Dizzy. Grateful. Definitely hungry.”

“I’ll call for food,” she said as she rolled toward the intercom, but Hyungwon grabbed her wrist.

“They don’t have what I want,” he teased with a wicked grin, “but you do.”

He tugged Denarii’s waist toward him until she straddled his. Even from here, he could feel the intense fire he’d stoked in her sex, and her wet anticipation now pooled on his stomach. If she hadn’t just drained him, he would be inside her already, but it could wait. In the meantime, he was happy to wile away some credits between her legs in another way.

Lips quirked mischievously to one side, his succubus said, “That so? Take whatever you need, baby.”

Hyungwon scooped his hands under her ass and pulled her higher up his body until her cunt was inches away from his mouth. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply. Her perfume was here, too, but so was the real Denarii, rich and ripe and ready for him. He licked his lips. With one final tug, he brought her to his mouth and urged her downward.

At first kiss, he expected something sweet and artificial like the other women he’d been with, altered by drugs to taste like some off-the-shelf fruit cocktail or candy bar. Not her, not his Denarii. She tasted like a woman, dark and mysterious and tangy and precisely how he needed her.

He flattened his tongue along the length of her seam, and instantly, her hips canted up and her head kicked back with a luxurious moan. As beautiful as that was, he needed her closer. He yanked her hips back down so his nose was buried just above her clit and his tongue could roam deep inside her.

One of Denarii’s hands latched onto his thigh and squeezed as her hips bucked along his mouth so she was riding his face in earnest now. Her tits bounced and her thighs flexed around his ears while she dripped nectar onto his hungry lips. Hyungwon had never been happier.

_I’ll give you all of me, but I’m going to take all of you…_

Her panting increased with her tempo, as did her little gasps and cries, but Hyungwon wanted more. His hands wrapped around her hips to still her, and her attention ratcheted to him. Before she could say a word, he opened wide and drew every inch of her he could get into his mouth.

Denarii snapped forward, one hand tangling in his hair and the other strangling the pillow. She watched him wide-eyed and whimpering as his thick lips teased her swollen clit from her folds and suckled relentlessly.

“Hyungwon...”

Her voice melted like chocolate, bathing him in sweet indulgence. He drank it up as he drank her up.

He could feel her thighs quiver around him as her pussy trembled at his onslaught. He had her. He could feel it.

She reached back and found his cock ramrod straight again and desperate for her, and at her sudden grip, his loosened. Before he could stop her, she was sliding back from his face.

“No!” he protested. “I want to—”

Denarii soothed a matted lock from his sweaty brow and then wiped his glistening chin with her thumb. “Hush, my love. It’s time to get lost in me.”

She was right. As badly as he’d wanted to make her cum on his tongue, his cock was aching to be inside her, and he couldn’t trust his bank account to hold out much longer. He was running out of time to make her his forever.

“How do you know these things?” Hyungwon murmured as his hands roved up and down her gentle hourglass.

“Because I want to be lost, too.”

Denarii crushed her mouth against his as he felt her fingers flutter around his hilt, dragging the tip of his member back and forth through her wetness until she seated him just inside her entrance. They locked eyes, their lips poised against each other’s in an eternal kiss. She pushed back as Hyungwon pushed up until they met in the middle, consuming each other’s moans.

His mind was swimming in sensation. Velvet and honey, heat and pressure, victory and surrender. Rational thought fled to make room for base need. He needed this woman, more than he’d ever needed anything. He needed to fuck her. He needed to make her cum all over his cock. He needed to pump her full of his seed.

At last, their eyes cleared, and they found each other in the wan light.

“Hi, baby,” she said again, this time less coy and more teasing.

Hyungwon smiled. “Hi.”

With parted lips and hooded eyes, Denarii rolled back her hips until his shaft was sheathed completely inside her. It wasn’t hard; she was soaked. They sighed together into the shadows, one voice deep and one feather-light.

“You feel so good, honey, so good,” she crooned as she controlled their early rhythm.

Denarii teased herself as much as she did Hyungwon, dragging his cock along every inch of her walls so he could appreciate just how eager she was to take him. She was tight and trembling from her near orgasm, and he knew if he just had the courage, he could bring them both to sweet release in moments, but his end meant their end, and he wasn’t ready for that.

Instead, he watched mesmerized as Denarii rose and fell on his length with the grace of a dancer. Her breasts bounced in the violet haze as little sighs trickled from her slackened lips. Her gaze drifted down to meet his, and the moment he smiled at her, she sank down again, swirling her ass around his hips. Her cunt hugged him as fiercely as her legs did, and when she ran her hands across her nipples and up through her ribbons of raven hair, Hyungwon realized nothing humanity could ever construct would be half as impressive as this woman riding him.

“Denarii…” he whispered as he reached for her cheek.

She leaned into it and then kissed his palm, even as she kept her rocking smooth and deep.

He could cum again right now, fill her up and probably do it once more. Over and over and over. He could never get enough of her body. Even if he was going broke, she was all his, for now and forever, as far as he was concerned.

Denarii was bouncing in his lap now, her need growing more urgent by the second. She tipped forward to give herself more play on his cock, and the increased friction was a clear prelude to an all-consuming fire. Though he couldn’t bear to miss a moment, Hyungwon closed his eyes and let the intensity of their connection engulf him.

The slick sound of passion rebounded off the walls along with her steady stream of whimpering. Every fuck sent shockwaves through his body. He’d never been this hard in his life, and it was almost painful. He wanted to cum so badly, but so did she. He could feel her walls fluttering with desperation, but he could also feel her legs shaking with her exertion.

He could do better for her. She deserved better.

Hyungwon pulled out to a wail of protest from his beautiful apparition, but he quickly pushed her back onto the bed and tugged her pussy back to him. He had planned to plunge right back in, but now that he could see her throbbing for him, he lowered his thumb to her clit and circled it rhythmically.

With a cry too magnificent to comprehend, Denarii clutched the pillows and arched into his hand. Pride swelled in his chest. She writhed beneath him, her face contorted with ecstasy and her chest heaving as she gasped, but then her hands shot down to his and froze him between her thighs.

“Please,” she begged. “Please, Hyungwon, I want you to feel it.”

The only thing he could do was obey.

He lined up his aching cock with her entrance and reunited them with a grunt of gratitude for her delicious pink heat.

Hyungwon didn’t waste any more time hiding from what they both craved. He fucked her fast and hard and deep as he could go. Sweat poured from his brow and peppered his back while his hands commanded her waist.

It was different, being in control of a woman like this. It sent a thrill up his spine and a hunger to his tongue and a surge through his chest like a gorilla trumpeting his victory. The need to possess her, to make sure she never forgot him or his cock, was alien and overpowering, but it made him impossibly harder.

Denarii was stretched out beneath him, legs spread wide, one hand massaging her throat and the other tugging her hair. Her eyes rolled back in her head as her breathing grew more and more vocal. His name echoed throughout the room.

Hyungwon’s thumb resumed its frenzy over her clit, and her knees tightened against the wave of pleasure.

“I’m gonna—oh god. Let go with me, baby,” she urged, and he did.

His eyes screwed shut and he came, unloading his white-hot lust inside her while blood roared in his ears and relief stampeded through his veins. Little groans dribbled out of his mouth as tremors overtook him and cemented his hips flush to hers lest any of his seed escape.

Denarii came seconds after, and true to her word, he felt her—every blessed shiver and quake. Her cunt squeezed him insistently, almost as though she was trying to pull him deeper, and Hyungwon would have gladly followed. Her knees crushed his sides, and then all at once, they fell away, leaving a sexed-out temptress breathless and weak beneath him.

He crashed onto her chest, and with a strangled little cry, he murmured her name against her jaw.

A heartbeat later, Denarii’s fingers found their way under his chin, and she tilted his head to find her waiting for him. They kissed, their mouths cool and their breath stale. As her tongue glided across his bottom lip, his cock shifted inside her walls, and she bit down, drawing him inside her mouth until he thought he would fade completely into her.

When Hyungwon’s eyes opened at last, she was still here. She was still real.

Denarii caught his gaze and laughed, a bright little burst of sunshine in the dark. He might have been insulted if she hadn’t added, “I don’t remember the last time I had a real orgasm.”

Now Hyungwon was laughing too, their bodies roiling against each other. He started to pull out, but she hooked a leg behind him.

“Stay,” she murmured against his neck. “Stay until you can’t.”

He wasn’t sure if that meant inside her or with her, but it didn’t matter. She had asked it of him.

Hyungwon didn’t want to crush her any longer, so he braced on his elbows, but she knocked away that defense as well. She held onto him tightly while her foot idly rubbed his calf.

They laid like that for a while, Denarii humming against his throat while Hyungwon committed every sensation to memory—the peacefulness of her brow, the creak of the mattress beneath them, the perfume of sex and chocolate in her hair, the tang of sweat and pussy on his tongue, the hug of her walls still quavering around his softening cock.

More than anything else, Hyungwon savored the swell of his heart in his chest. He hadn’t felt it move in years, and now that he was sure it had never stopped beating, he was terrified it would the moment he walked out that red door. Somehow, he’d lived an entire lifetime in an evening, and there was no way of going back to the old one.

“Are you all right, my love?” Denarii asked as her arms tightened around him.

“Yeah.”

Since she seemed to know everything else he was thinking, she probably knew that was horseshit, too, but she didn’t call him on it. Instead, she said softly, “The ladies down there are lucky.”

“I don’t know about that,” he hedged, suddenly stone sober. “My heart’s staying up here.”

Her hands stilled for a moment. Hyungwon heard her swallow.

Reluctantly, he slipped out of her, cold reality rushing back in. While Denarii tugged the comforter over them, he curled around her for warmth.

“I won’t be back,” he continued. The truth was leaden in his mouth, and he was glad he couldn’t see her face. “That was the last of my credits.”

“I know,” she whispered. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. You’re worth it.”

Silence settled in as she nuzzled her body deeper into his long frame and his eyelids fluttered shut. Hyungwon was getting used to it—the silence and her attention. Things were more dangerous than he could have ever imagined.

Slowly, Denarii spun in his grasp until she faced him. Her breath feathered across his lips before she leaned in for a brief kiss. When she pulled back, she asked, “What’s it like down there?”

Hyungwon’s eyes shot open.

“In the Troughs?” He hummed. The whole point of coming up here was so he didn’t have to think about it down there for a few hours. He couldn’t imagine why she cared, but he answered, “It’s crowded all the time, and there’s no off switch anywhere. It’s loud and damp and cold even when it’s hot. You’re not missing anything.”

Denarii’s hand stilled in his hair as her eyes creaked open just a bit, though she wasn’t looking at him. “I haven’t touched the ground in years, only gone up. Maybe in ten years, when they let me go. Maybe five. We’ll see how I age. I wonder if I’ll miss this then? I wonder if I’ll care.”

Hyungwon said nothing because there wasn’t anything he could say. This room had been paradise for him. She made it sound like a prison.

“I forgot what it smells like outside,” Denarii mumbled, her eyes closing again.

“Like mushrooms and week-old ramen,” he laughed. She didn’t.

“Sometimes I think I remember it. The rusty metal pinging in the rain sounded kinda like music. That was nice. It was real, like you.”

Hyungwon kissed her and said, “I’ll take you dancing in the rain then, in the alley by my place. It’s full of all the rusty metal and mushrooms a girl could ever want.”

Denarii burst out laughing until a tear slipped down her cheek. “It’s a date, my love.”

A blue light blipped on beside her bedside, and she sat up immediately, wiping the tears from her eyes.

“They’ll see you out now,” she said as she helped him back into his shirt and straightened his collar. Her fingers stalled on the fabric before they changed course for his jawline.

“Fuck,” he whispered. “I thought we’d have more time.”

He still had so much he wanted to do with his goddess. He wanted to wash her clean in the shower and kiss her under the water. He wanted to pin her fresh body up against the bathroom wall and make her filthy again. He wanted to brush her hair and sing to her and take her wherever she wanted to go, and whenever they got there, he wanted to give her a home and kids and tell her he loved her and he would always love her.

His mind flipped through his meager possessions, desperate for anything he could trade for another hour at her side, but even if he offered all of it, it wasn’t worth ten more minutes with her.

“Listen, Hyungwon, if—” Denarii cut herself off as she risked a glance at his black eyes.

_I love you._

The words were there, just inside his lips, waiting for courage to override their absurdity. Instead, Hyungwon kissed her, leaving them tattooed across her mouth and jaw and earlobe and finally her throat.

There was the double knock at the door—polite and curt and the worst fucking thing he’d ever heard. Reluctantly, he pulled back, his every limb growing hollower by the second.

“I’ll walk you to the door,” Denarii said as she tugged her sweater over her naked form. The pink fabric fell just above her thighs, and even in the thin light, Hyungwon could see the memory of him coating the bare skin there. What little makeup she’d worn had rubbed off, leaving her even more naked and even more beautiful.

At the door, she held out his hoodie as he slid into his filthy boots.

“I’m glad I met you,” said his impossible dream before she opened the door.

A large man waited on the other side. He was tall like Hyungwon, but he was twice as wide, with two cybernetic arms and a blank expression. Maybe he was all machine under that ashen skin. He was nothing like the placid guy who had escorted Hyungwon up and explained the rules, but it was easy to understand why. Probably very few men left Denarii’s room willingly. Hyungwon wouldn’t let her see him like that, carted off like a sack of rice by a cyborg.

With the last of his willpower, Hyungwon bowed to his hostess.

“Goodnight,” he managed because the other word hurt too much.

She smiled, more like a performer than he had ever seen from her, and for a second, he questioned if any of it had actually been real.

“Goodnight, Hyungwon.”

_I love you, Denarii._

And the crimson door shut.

**Author's Note:**

> Cross-posted on my tumblr under the same handle. All future content hits there first along with updates and teasers.


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